WASHINGTON — Barack Obama rolled into Washington Saturday evening on the rails of history.

The whistle-stop tour that was to bring the president- elect to the Capitol re-created the route of Abraham Lincoln’s 1861 arrival here via Philadelphia and Baltimore — a powerful evocation of a moment when the nation was on the brink of crisis and a leader arrived who could deliver it to safety.

It was a quintessential Obama moment: steeped in symbols of America’s past; a nod to a history-making present.

“This is part of what got him elected,” said Louis Masur, a political sociologist at Trinity College. “The guy knows how to tell a story.”

It’s a story that he’s woven, sometimes delicately, sometimes with a more heavy hand, throughout the campaign and the lead-up to his entrance into the White House.

He’ll be sworn in with the same Bible that Lincoln used, and today he’ll likely speak at a welcoming ceremony from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, echoing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s march on Washington a day before MLK Day. (Obama’s appearance hasn’t been confirmed for security reasons.)

All this stems from what scholars say is Obama’s deep feel for history and an appreciation of the power of tapping into the country’s historical DNA to enliven his own story.

“I would have loved to have stood with him in the Lincoln bedroom, where the Emancipation Proclamation was signed,” said Harold Holzer, a renowned Lincoln scholar who said Obama “has a genuine feel for Lincoln.”

“Just imagine, the first family will live in the same space where events took place that had so much significance for some of their own ancestors,” Holzer said.

But as those symbols pile up in sometimes dizzying ways — he’s also elicited comparisons to Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy — there may also be risks in playing so heavy-handedly on history, scholars say.

“I think there is a real fine line that he has to walk when he does this. Pointing to previous challenges and how they’ve been overcome by the American people and presidents . . . is relatively safe,” said James Pfiffner, a presidential scholar at George Mason University in Virginia.

“But to the point that he implies that he is comparable in rhetoric to a JFK or in transforming the country as FDR did or to Lincoln as one of the best presidents, that’s where it gets dangerous.”

Symbols are double-edged

Take the Lincoln comparison.

Obama has said that both he and Lincoln are skinny Illinois lawyers who made good, but the analogy is far more potent than that.

As the first African-American president, Obama’s election can be viewed as the completion of Lincoln’s work to bring African-Americans from slavery into American society as equals. Or even as a view into how Obama sees the challenges facing contemporary America.

“I think he’s chosen Lincoln not because of the slavery angle but because of the reconciliation angle,” said Henry Louis Gates, a Harvard scholar who recently created a documentary on Obama and Lincoln.

“It’s that the country is riven — by class, by race. The haves, the have-nots. He sees in Lincoln the metaphor of reconciliation the country needs for the economy to regain its footing.”

The downside, scholars say, is that Obama is implicitly comparing himself to one of the country’s greatest presidents before he even steps into the White House.

That creates expectations that could later haunt him.

“The better you are at this, the harder you fall,” when the administration hits inevitable snags, Trinity’s Masur said.

“The danger is evident. If things don’t turn around, if his administration doesn’t do that reconciliation and the general trend of things continues downward, that rhetoric will ultimately increase the gap between expectations and result,” the sociologist said.

Just ask Genevieve Vaught, a 67-year-old Washington cabdriver who has a hard time talking about Obama except in terms of the sweep of history.

“When Martin Luther King in his speech said, ‘One day I won’t be here. One day you’ll be at the mountain top,’ that is what he was talking about,” said Vaught, a hand-knitted cap covering her graying hair and an Obama travel mug in her cup holder. “One day there will be a black man in the White House.

“Obama is heaven-sent, and he’s going to make history in his work,” said Vaught, who ticked off a list of uncanny historical coincidences, including the fact that Obama accepted the nomination 45 years to the day after King’s Washington speech.

Reading the moment right

Vaught’s words only underscore a point made by scholars: Many Americans genuinely see Obama’s inauguration as an event of modern history in the making — and the president-elect has to find some way to speak to those aspirations.

Not only is Obama the first black president, but he enters office during the worst economic crisis since World War II.

The references to Martin Luther King appeal to black Americans’ sense that this is a unique milestone in their struggle for equal treatment and civil rights, scholars say.

And the references to Lincoln may resonate more with mainstream America’s sense that the nation needs a remarkable leader to bring it out of crisis, no matter what race he is.

“It is equally historic for white Americans and black Americans that a black man is walking into the White House, but their angle of vision on the phenomenon will be slightly different,” said Gates, the Harvard scholar.

“If (Obama) had only appealed to black people, he would be president of the NAACP and not president of the United States,” Gates said. “He had to get white people to vote for him, and you don’t do that by merely manipulating black symbols. That’s why Lincoln works so well for him.”

Even if he risks charges of being presumptious, experts say, so far, Obama has read the moment and the public’s need for inspiration from its leaders better than just about any politician in living memory.

“At this moment, specifics don’t matter. What matters is the tone,” Masur said. “That’s a form of leadership and inspiration that he has to give first and foremost.

“Then I’ll worry about how much money he has in his bailout plan and what tax cuts he’ll give to businesses.”

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